


Shackles

by kokoro_kikoeru



Series: with love, bluebird [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: (both implied), Complicated Relationships, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent (?), Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Manipulative Bill Cipher, One Shot, Yandere Bill Cipher, don't trust bill guys he a dick, possibly part of a series, well kinda not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 10:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13973481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kokoro_kikoeru/pseuds/kokoro_kikoeru
Summary: He didn’t know what this was.Hell, he didn’t even know how this all started.“That’s a lie.”It was.





	Shackles

**Author's Note:**

> “I hate it when you hold me at night.”

**No Good Deed Goes Unpunished**  

_You’ve only got yourself to blame_

_You couldn’t let him go_

_And so in turn, he did the same_

_Well now it just goes to show—_

 

* * *

 

The silence that night was, as always, welcoming.

He’d grown accustomed to it. To the faint ringing hum that’d echo against the ridges and nooks in the shells of his ears. To the streams of moonlight that’d pour through the tall, barred windows of this cursed room. To the chilling warmth of bronzed, limp arms loosely imprisoning him in an embrace.

A heated breath fanned and tickled the nape of his neck at a deceptively soothing pace. Large, toned hands with dexterous, eloquent fingers would occasionally curl ever so slightly to hover over contrastingly porcelain skin. He felt the blooming pain of budding bruises and bites that were sown all over his clammy body in scattered disarray.

His “lover” was always affectionate.

The brunet felt the dozing blond shift again, disturbing lukewarm sheets while lethargically leaning down to bury his face against his sapling’s curls.

Said little tree inevitably tensed each and every time—but then again, who could blame him?

Dipper laid awake in their bed, in the arms of a _monster._

As harsh as it sounds, the man in their bed was a monster no doubt, and oh how he wished he hadn’t so stubbornly denied that particular theory.

Why again?

_“You’re a great friend, Bill.”_

Ah, right.

The memory seemed to always play and play again—an old recording, a broken record—stuck on a loop in the theatre of his subconscious thoughts to serve as a reminder of the grave misstep he’d made.

Always, always endlessly repeating somewhere within the recesses of his mind with its cast consisting of crushing guilt and lingering regret.

He felt his stomach curling itself into knots again, its scorching acid scritching and scratching at his insides.

_“I li-like you—I really, really do—I-I mean you’re practically like a long-lost brother!”_

He wanted to look away from the damned thing though each time he tried, his attention was eventually drawn back to it again.

The walls of his throat seemed to be collapsing into each other now, dry and overheating and he took note of the whimpering sobs threatening to spill as his mind went more than a bit anxious as it finally registered that it’s so hard to breathe.

The searing presence behind him that was pleasant but awkward and wrong, wrong, wrong was already too much— _just too much_ —and it didn’t help at all so he soon found himself gingerly inching away.

_“But I…”_

Inwardly, he spewed enough curses that would make the swarthiest of sailors faint, all of them directed to himself and his irrational emotions.

He regretted it.

_“I’m… I’m so sorry…”_

Every word, every action, just— _everything_.

_“I just—I-I don’t—”_

Dear God, did Dipper regret.

_“…I can’t love you like that.”_

But how else does one reject another?

_“I just don’t feel the same.”_

He hadn’t the nerve to lie, couldn’t lace and stuff saccharin into an already overly sweet, plastic response just to appease the man (such an act was even crueller, after all). It wouldn’t change much, if anything, however.

_“I hope you can understand.”_

A curtain drew back, its deep velvet fabric lifting to reveal the figure standing behind it. The thing was a cancer, a sickness that had spread throughout his person after the blond’s confession. It quickly noticed him amidst the ocean of empty seats.

It smirked.

_“W-we can still be friends, though!”_

It had many names, but it preferred to go by “Guilt.” It mimicked and donned a poor, ugly caricature of the Pines boy as its skin and breathed a truth in his ear— _“You’re to blame.”_

Deny as he might, it surely was a truth. He was too kind, too forgiving; he couldn’t be stern or cold when he saw the deceptive sorrow lying within his friend’s cyan eyes. He’d thought and hoped that maybe, just maybe, everything could be right again; that everything could turn back to how it was before.

Foolish he was.

_“Since this doesn’t mean w-we have to stop hanging out or anything right?”_

Did he really not notice the guy’s smile? How thin and strained it was or how the muscles around the blond’s mouth were pulled so taut that the guy’s lower lip was quivering?

Searing, bitter stabs of remorse impaled his heart again when Bill’s reply was played.

_“…Yeah, sure…”_

Dipper must’ve been blind.

~~_(Or maybe he did love the man.)_ ~~

He should’ve noticed how deep his heartbreak and desperation ran—how fathomless and abysmal the other’s love for him was.

He was definitely blind. He probably still is, too. He’s still here, after all, and Guilt had little to do with it.

What’s the other reason then?

The teen shook his head, as though the action could rid his mind of the incessant memories and disturbing thoughts.

His head was throbbing at this point, wave after wave of nausea washing over him by the minute.

Ever so carefully and quietly, Dipper shimmied his way out of his captor’s embrace. He commanded his numb and dully aching limbs to carry him to the bathroom.

The brunet was sitting at the edge of the bed when those arms he had recently escaped had languidly looped around his middle once more.

“Mmm…” Bill groaned, still half-asleep. He pressed his forehead to the warm skin of his sapling’s back. “Pine Tree? Where are you going?”

Dipper tensed and swallowed the lump clogging his throat. “…Nowhere, Bill—don't worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

It was true; they both knew this.

“Then hurry up and come back to bed,” his “lover” huffed.

“I know.”

A silence passed, painful and dense, almost tangible. Cipher broke it.

“…You okay?”

The male twin clenched his jaw, biting the insides of his cheek before mumbling, “…Yeah, I’m fine.”

“…”

Another silence, once again shattered by Bill as the blond muttered, “I’m sorry.”

The sudden confession left Dipper dumbstruck.

“For what?” he finally asked.

What should’ve been said: _“For everything.”_

“…For loving you,” was what was said instead.

The hesitant adolescent’s lips pursed and thinned into a firm line. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, cautiously handpicking his next words.

“That’s not something to be sorry for.”

The two weren’t exactly feeling talkative that night as yet another silence befell the room. And Bill was the one to interrupt, just like before.

“Pine Tree?” The owner of the nickname gnawed some more on his already abused lower lip.

“Yeah, Bill?”

The twin’s back faced weary but alert, cerulean eyes. Those orbs scrutinized his being—he’s used to this too—examining every faint bounce the brunet’s hair would make as he shakingly yet steadily breathed in and out and the subtle trembling and twitches of his sore muscles.

Then, “You won’t leave me, right?”

He left out the _“if you could.”_

The kid weighed the words on his already too thick tongue, tasting and testing them in his dry, parched mouth. He tried smiling, even though the other couldn’t see it, a barely-there quirk of his lips gracing his strained features.

“…Never.”

Those arms held him tighter. A crown of sandy blonde hair rubbed and nuzzled against his skin, much like a dog would.

He remained silent, kept still.

“…I-I’m so sorry. Please don’t ha-hate me.”

That voice—usually cheerful, nasally and fruity, annoying in the best ways—was hoarse and downright pathetic, all fake and overdramatic like a bad soap opera. It still managed to pluck and pull on his heartstrings.

Dipper sighed, “Bill, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for. I’m fine and I’d never hate you.”

His “lover” shifted, forehead now contacting the tense, stuffy air around them instead of skin and electric blue eyes meeting the nape of a porcelain neck that’s marred with splotchy purple flowers and angry red rings.

“Rea-Really?” Bill’s tone was hopeful. The expectation was meticulously woven into the letters of the words, a feverish mania underlying everything, as per usual.

The insides of his mouth were surely bleeding by now.

“…Yeah.”

It’d never been so easy yet so hard to lie before.

Those arms pulled him ever closer somehow and that forehead once again touched his skin. It met with his shoulder this time. He barely suppressed his shiver when he heard it: “Pine Tree.”

His back met the other’s tanned, toned chest. Hands were splayed across his flushed, damp skin, fingers gently caressing and feeling. A pair of soft, soft lips pressed to each aching mark—to purple-blues, reds and the occasional green.

The Pines boy remained adamant and tried his damnedest to not bat an eye at everything happening.

He felt sick again—world spinning and stomach turning, acid splashing against its sides in furious, roaring waves. He felt dirty. So, so dirty. He wanted to shower, to scrub his skin raw pink until he couldn't feel those touches anymore; he needed to feel clean and well again. This wasn’t right—it was too close, too warm, too much, too wrong, just wrong, wrong, _wrong_ —

“Dipper, I love you.”

The words were whispered in his ear.

He flinched.

“I love you, I love you. So, so much.”

His head, and subsequently his body, turned towards the man as the other cradled his face between clean but blood-stained hands. Their foreheads rested against each other’s, eyes boring into another set.

A thumb slid across the apple of his cheek rhythmically, stroking it.

“I love you.”

The words were confirmed with a gentle, honeyed kiss.

Dipper couldn’t stop his silent tears from falling even if he tried. He slung both milky arms over Bill’s neck, adjusting his position to make the both of them more comfortable. His hand reached for that crown of sandy blond hair, tenderly carding through the strands.

He closed his eyes and kissed back.

Bill broke away, too soon for the both of them, eliciting a gasp from his treasure. A face that’s usually painted with the colour of peaches-and-cream was now rosy and rubicund—panting, shaking, _broken_. Simply beautiful.

~~_(Just the way Bill likes it.)_ ~~

The man repeated:

“I love you.”

It took Dipper several moments to find the correct response.

“I love you too.”

He wasn’t sure if he meant it.

_“That’s another lie.”_

It was.

**Author's Note:**

> please leave kudos and comments; they are very much appreciated!! (´•ω•`๑)   
>  i've been in a rut lately for writing so this is a thing to kinda work it through   
>  not really happy with how i used to write so i'm trying to do something new and make things less wordy??   
>  i'll be back working on btwf soon and thank you very much for reading!! (*･▽･*)   
>  **edit:** ah i forgot to add a link to [the song that inspired this fic here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDJOP16yNdY)


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